The Leader Oversight Bias in Justice and Hypocrisy Evaluations of Organisational Diversity Practices

Misalignment in diversity and inclusion (D&I) occurs when organisations make claims that they do not uphold through their practices. In the present study, we probed a leader oversight bias which may lead to ignorance of misalignment and, consequently, lower perceptions of organisational hypocrisy. Through an online experiment, we randomly allocated 198 participants to the role of either a leader or non-leader in a fictional organisation. T-tests showed that leaders perceived their organisation as less hypocritical than non-leaders. This effect was sequentially mediated by anticipated justice following exposure to a gender diversity statement, and perceived justice following exposure to organisational practices. Contrary to our predictions, gender did not moderate this effect. Our results demonstrate that leaders may perceive their organisations as more just and less hypocritical even when this may not be the case, because they attempt to confirm their prior, more favourable justice anticipations. This research calls for establishing better cross-hierarchical communication structures in organisations and for more effective management of leadership oversights. Future studies can examine this bias in field settings and isolate its driving mechanisms.